Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Rich Van Pelt trains thousands of educators, counselors and youth workers each year in adolescent crisis intervention and teen suicide prevention and response. His expertise springs from more than three decades of youth and family work, including ten years with incarcerated youth in the Colorado Department of Corrections. He is president of Alongside Consulting, a Denver-based leadership development organization, and is national director of ministry relationships for Compassion International. Often called on to offer counsel and direction after major teen incidents, like the Columbine shootings, Rich is also the author of Intensive Care: Helping Teenagers In Crisis and co-author of The Youth Worker's Guide to Helping Teenagers In Crisis.

Jim Hancock invested two decades as a church-based youth worker. Now he spends his days writing and creating digital movies and learning designs for youth workers, parents, and adolescents. He's the author of many youth ministry resources including How to Volunteer Like a Pro and The Justice Mission, and co-author of Good Sex 2.0 and The Youth Worker's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis.

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When youth work becomes crisis managers.

Anyone who stays in youth ministry for a while will encounter significant crises. Family break-ups, substance abuse, sexual assault, eating disorders, cutting, suicide, gun violenceÅ 

But without proper and immediate care, crises like these can cause years of emotional pain and spiritual scarring in students.

Rich Van Pelt and Jim Hancock want to help you prevent that from happening.
Through their experience and expertise, you¹ll learn how to:
-Respond quickly and effectively to crisis -Balance legal, ethical, and spiritual outcomes -Forge preventive partnerships with parents, schools, and students -Bring healing when damage is done

When crises happen‹and they will, ready or not‹there are practical steps you can take. Van Pelt and Hancock provide field-tested counsel and specific, biblical advice for each stage of crisis. Keep this book on hand as your go-to resource when you need it most.

Because when it comes to crisis, it¹s not a matter of if, but when.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Youth Worker's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis

Zondervan

Contents

1.0 Life beyond Columbine...........................................91.1 Understanding Crisis............................................141.2 Dangerous Opportunity...........................................242.0 Intervention....................................................322.1 Triage..........................................................332.2 Making Connections..............................................472.3 Deep Listening..................................................572.4 Action Plan.....................................................693.0 The Bigger Picture..............................................793.1 Referral........................................................803.2 Legal and Ethical Considerations................................884.0 Preventive Partnerships.........................................1024.1 Youth Groups....................................................1064.2 Parents.........................................................1134.3 Schools.........................................................1194.4 Law Enforcement.................................................1235.0 When & If: Specific Crises......................................1265.1 Accidents.......................................................1275.2 Anger...........................................................1295.3 Bullying........................................................1315.4 Cheating........................................................1355.5 Cutting and Self-Injurious Behavior.............................1385.6 Death...........................................................1415.7 Divorce.........................................................1445.8 Dropping Out....................................................1495.9 Eating Disorders................................................1515.10 Hazing..........................................................1565.11 Incest..........................................................1625.12 Interventions...................................................1675.13 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder..................................1735.14 Pregnancy.......................................................1755.15 Rape............................................................1785.16 Sexual Abuse....................................................1805.17 Sexual Identity Confusion.......................................1895.18 Sexually Transmitted Diseases...................................1965.19 Substance Abuse and Addiction...................................1985.20 Suicide.........................................................2085.21 Terror..........................................................2185.22 Trouble with the Law............................................2226.0 Appendixes......................................................2276.1 Plan of Action Outline..........................................2286.2 Child Abuse Reporting Numbers...................................2306.3 Emotional Map...................................................2376.4 First Aid for an Overdose.......................................2416.5 State Sex Offenders Registries..................................2436.6 Where in the World Are You?.....................................2486.7 Glossary of Child Protective Services Terms.....................2536.8 Intake Interview Form...........................................2797.0 Endnotes........................................................280

Chapter One

Rich Van Pelt: You probably don't live anywhere near Columbine; you may not even know where Columbine is-which is fine. It's in Littleton, Colorado-not exactly the center of the universe, or anything else for that matter-more the southwestern edge of the Denver metro area. But on April 20, 1999-and for about a month after-Columbine seemed like the center of the universe, judging by news coverage. On that day two students came to school armed to the teeth and started shooting people. They killed 12 students, one teacher, and themselves in a bloody rampage.

Until the felling of the World Trade Center towers in September 2001 there was, I suspect, never a more photographed crime scene. Like the terror on 9/11, the Columbine coverage was all from the outside-a crisis covered from every angle except the one where people were caught struggling between life and death.

Jim Hancock: Ask a dozen youth workers about life beyond Columbine and you'll hear about tipping points, wake-up calls, and rumors of revival; about law enforcement cover-ups, gun control, and Michael Moore; about increased school security and purely cosmetic changes; about freaks, geeks, jocks, and bullies; about a terror notable mainly for its demographics (meaning the shooters and victims were mainly suburban and relatively affluent).

Ask a youth worker on the south side of Chicago who met with his group on the evening of the massacre. He'd tell you the adult leaders in his church followed the news from Littleton throughout the afternoon and arrived early to pray and prepare to deal with the trauma once students started showing up. What was truly shocking, he'd say, was how little emotion there was of any sort-not anger, not fear, not even compassion. Kids were fooling around like it was just another Tuesday. He could hardly believe it.

What emerged from the group as leaders tried to engage the students in talking about the shootings surprised him even more: What's the big deal? his students wondered. We feel bad for those people and all, but we have shootings in our community all the time.

"I got shot," a boy said, lifting his shirt to show the scar.

"My brother got killed," a girl said.

And one by one the adults learned that every kid in the room was acquainted with violence and brutal death to a degree none of the leaders knew before that night. That youth worker would say he felt terrible for the Columbine families and he felt terrible for the children and families in his own church whose loss went unrecorded all those years because it was-what? Less concentrated? Less affluent? Browner-skinned? (He wouldn't include that last question, but I certainly would.)

So that's one version of life beyond Columbine; one where it would be nice to grieve the loss of strangers if we just had the emotional reserves. But most of us live well beyond Columbine, and, due respect, we have our own crises.

Ask a youth worker who actually had kids at Columbine, and you may hear about outsiders swarming Littleton to profit from the misery; about cameras, microphones, and relentless scrutiny; about quick in-and-out visits from fear-mongering and fund-raising Christian carpetbaggers who came mainly to talk about themselves.

All these years later, the anger and sadness about those things are just under the surface for some folks, mixed with images and memories they can't quite believe another person would comprehend: Crouching behind a hardened police vehicle listening to gunfire inside the school. Six, seven, eight, nine ambulances screaming out of a cul-de-sac, every one bearing injured students-23 in all. A fireman hosing blood off the walkway of a house repurposed as a triage center. Walking about in a fog. Burying youth group kids. Working to exhaustion and sickness. Feeling guilty about an ordinary pleasure enjoyed for the first time since the killing.

RVP: Here's a story you maybe haven't heard: When all hell broke loose at the high school-and before, during, and after the outsiders came and went-there was a network of youth workers quietly looking after kids in Littleton and the communities that weave around it: Highlands Ranch. Southglenn. Greenwood Village. Cherry Hills. Englewood. Sheridan. Bow Mar. Ken Caryl. Columbine.

It's always been a relational thing-this network, formalized only to the extent that we gave it a name-The Southwest Connection-just so we'd have something to call it. No Web site. No agenda. Just relationships with people who understand each other in the ebb and flow of ministry with kids and families. Youth workers in the Southwest Connection come from all over the theological and ecclesiological map: Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Bible church, Catholic, independent, nondenominational. They come to know each other as colleagues in ministry to students at a dozen or so high schools and probably twice that many middle schools. That's what's always drawn us together: Our love for kids. And shared space: 80123, give or take.

With physical proximity, theological diversity, shared identity as youth workers, and the nurturing that blossoms when we come together, these remarkable people walked each other through the terror; finding each other here and there in the craziness and taking strength from the horrible, blessed realization this was really happening and we were not alone.

In the process, we learned that relationships are everything in a crisis. It wasn't the public extravaganzas that helped; it was one person listening to another. It was off-sites with a few students. "I suppose the big public meetings were helpful," one of my friends says, meaning most weren't very helpful at all. "I mean they were well-produced and all, but what really helped was contact with people."

His wife takes a softer tone toward the high profile gatherings: "Some of the big meetings gave groups of four and five students a place to focus their attention on each other and process their experiences together." Back to relationships.

We learned that no two kids (or youth workers) needed the same treatment. Some wanted attention, others anonymity. Some were afraid to leave Littleton; others couldn't wait to get out of town. Some concealed where they came from, whether they were going across town or across country; others basically bought the T-shirt.

We learned not to avoid the pain; to ask direct, specific questions about each person's experience during those awful hours. And we learned the value of having those conversations sooner rather than later.

We learned not to give kids answers they know are smokescreens.

We learned the value of admitting honest confusion about God mingled with self-abandoned trust.

We learned about grace from co-workers, parents, and especially students at the other schools whose less concentrated, less noisy crises got bumped when the shooting started.

We learned we didn't need to know everything (as if anyone could); we needed to know people who could intervene for us and bring the right help at the right time.

We learned it isn't going to be over next week-or next year.

We learned to be wary of an outsider with a plan-not suspicious necessarily, but wary.

We learned that the revival we'd heard about didn't happen after all. What happened was depth.

We learned to trust God when we were afraid the Columbine kids wouldn't come back to youth group.

We learned we couldn't do everything (but not before we got tired and sick from trying). We learned to do something simple like meeting a couple of kids for a soft drink and a conversation, because God uses simple, frictionless connections to generate enough power to keep going.

And bit-by-bit we lived sort of unselfconsciously into the other story of life beyond Columbine, where most things returned to normal even if some things may never be the same. And it's all right because God is present either way.

JH: We wrote this book for people who are willing to be with teenagers when no one else wants to be-in the chaos and brokenness of life as we know it. We wrote for youth workers willing to bring themselves to a kid's crisis and stick with her until she finds her balance again.

This book is as smart and practical as we know how to make it at this point in our lives. Mostly we've written with one voice; but here and there, as we've done above, the text reflects Rich's tone or mine in different fonts.

Between us, we lived through almost everything in these pages and can vouch for what we say here from personal knowledge (except direct experience with a big honkin' natural disaster, which we hope to go on avoiding indefinitely). That said, we're the first to admit we don't know much compared to all there is to know about crisis. So we've included lots of citations from sources we believe are credible. You'll find the endnotes and appendixes occasionally updated on the Web site at www.youthspecialties.com/store/crisis.

RVP: We're glad you're taking up the challenge of this book. We hope you find it not just stimulating but intensely useful in your work with adolescents and their families. Let us know how you use this book and how we might improve future editions.

Rich Van Pelt & Jim Hancock

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Youth Worker's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisisby Rich Van Pelt Jim Hancock Copyright © 2007 by Rich Van Pelt and Jim Hancock. Excerpted by permission.
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